Reclining chairs have become a very popular furniture item in today's home. Modern reclining chairs generally define three discrete seating positions: (1) an upright position in which the back is generally proximate a perpendicular orientation relative to the seat and the ottoman (if the chair is so equipped) is retracted; (2) a “TV” position in which the ottoman is extended, but the back is still more or less upright relative to the seat; and (3) a fully reclined position in which the ottoman is extended and the back is inclined at a greater angle relative to the seat.
A drawback of standard reclining chairs, however, is that they must be positioned at some distance from the wall of a room because the top of the backrest tilts in a rearward direction when the chair is reclined. Prior attempts have been made to address this rear clearance problem existing with standard reclining chairs. These attempts have resulted in a general class of recliner mechanisms known as “zero-clearance” mechanisms, wherein linkages or other elements are arranged so that the lower edge of the backrest and the chair seat shifts forward relative to the floor as the mechanism is reclined, thereby enabling a lesser rearward shift of the top edge of the backrest. Examples of such prior mechanisms are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,740,031; 5,011,220; 5,570,927; 5,588,710; 5,772,278 and 5,217,276, all hereby incorporated herein by reference.
One type of zero-clearance mechanism generally includes a four-bar linkage, wherein a pair of spaced apart swing links are pivoted on a base at one end of each link and pivoted to a seat link at the other ends. As the chair is reclined from the upright position in which the seat link is positioned over the base, the swing links pivot about their connections with the base to shift the seat link forwardly relative to the base. This in turn shifts the entirety of the backrest forwardly, away from any wall that may be behind the chair. These linkage based mechanisms are popular and in widespread use due to their low cost and relative ease of manufacture.
It is usually desirable for user comfort purposes, however, for the seat to slope rearwardly toward the backrest of the chair. This is typically implemented in the linkage based mechanisms by making the front swing link longer than the rear swing link. A consequence, however, is that a user sitting in the chair is usually forced to work against the mechanism to shift the chair from the upright to the reclined positions and vice versa, particularly immediately proximate the upright position. The difference in length between the front and rear swing links cannot be made too great without resulting in excessively high user effort to operate the chair. Since the degree of forward shifting of the seat and backrest depends at least in part on the length of the swing links, the extent to which such a mechanism can approach true “zero-clearance” is limited. As a result, prior linkage type zero-clearance mechanisms still generally require some degree of rear clearance behind the backrest, because the top of the backrest still shifts rearwardly to some degree when the chair is reclined.
Hence, what is still needed in the industry is a low cost, easy to operate recliner chair that enables less rear clearance than known “zero-clearance” mechanisms.